The invention relates to gloves for motorcyclists in general and in particular those for uses where high speeds are reached, be it on the road or on the racetrack.
These gloves are usually made of leather and their structure differs from that of simple gloves because it is suitably reinforced at various points with rigid or semirigid protections and pads, to protect the hand in the event of falls.
Among the materials suitable for these purposes there are for example carbon fibres, Keviar(copyright), plastic materials in general and others; moreover the seams are also made with special high-strength threads.
Of course, the structure of the glove thus obtained should not be an obstacle to the movements of the motorcyclist during riding.
Consequently there are some parts of the glove that cannot be protected adequately because otherwise the functionality thereof would be thereby greatly compromised: said parts can therefore constitute a weak point for the protection of the hand, in the event of a fall by the motorcyclist.
This applies for example to the fingers of the glove, which must be flexible so as to facilitate the bending movements of the hand present inside it.
For this purpose, according to a frequently used construction, the gloves considered here comprise a lower and an upper layer of leather (or other suitable material), both cut following the profile of the hand, which serve to form respectively the palm and the back of the glove or at least one part of these.
These two layers are then placed on top of each other at a distance corresponding to the thickness of the hand and the fingers of the glove are closed laterally by strips of leather or the like, which are stitched to the aforesaid layers and are commonly referred to as xe2x80x9cforksxe2x80x9d by persons skilled in the art. Hereinafter, for the sake of brevity, this term will be used to denote said strips.
Of course, the layers of leather used to form the glove can be provided with lining sheaths which will then be on the inside of the glove, once the manufacture thereof has been completed.
A problem that relates to known motorcycling gloves consists in the fact that the stitched joint of the forks in the respective fingers is a weak point in the event of a fall.
In fact in the gloves available nowadays, rigid protections are applied especially on the back of the glove, i.e. on the upper part thereof, in the region of the knuckles of the hand.
It can be understood, however, that it is not possible to apply similar protections or even simply provide pads along the sides of the fingers, because otherwise the flexibility thereof, which is necessary to facilitate the bending of the hand that grips the handle of the accelerator of the motorcycle or acts on the clutch lever, would thereby be impeded in an unacceptable way.
In not particularly serious situations, for example in cases where the fall causes a simple impact of the back of the hand against the road, the structure of gloves known nowadays acts as a kind of protective shield and is stressed only in the region of the protections provided for this purpose.
If, however, during the fall, an abrasion of the glove on the ground occurs, which is moreover a fairly frequent occurrence in the case of motorcycling competitions, said glove tends to rotate around the hand and to assume a deformed shape different from the normal shape in such a way that the weak parts thereof, especially the forks and their joining seams along the fingers of the glove, are also stressed.
The latter often collapse in such conditions and therefore the result is that the fingers of the hand remain exposed outside the glove, with all the risks that can easily be imagined; in this respect one only has to think of the speeds that are reached in certain motorcycling competitions.
From DE 86 30 839 U a glove is also known in which the respective phalanges of one or more fingers are connected with one another strips of flexible material. The said strips are extended transversally so as to connect at least a couple of adjacent fingers of the glove in such a way as to prevent the rotation of the fingers of the glove with respect to the fingers of the corresponding hand. The glove is intended for sanitary applications and does not include any means to protect the hand from impacts in case of severe falls.
From DE-A-197 02 154 another glove is known for protecting the people practicing high speed sports like snow boarding and downhill skiing in case that, as a consequence of the friction forces with the soil, the thumb spreads apart abnormally with respect to the rest of the hand. A noose-shaped band is transversally fastened onto the glove which encircles the thumb and the fingers at the basis thereof (that is in correspondance of the link between the phalanges and the metacarpus of the hand). Not even this glove envisages the adoption of means to protect the hand from impacts in case of severe falls.
The object of the present invention is therefore providing a motorcycling glove with structural and functional characteristics such as to ensure a complete protection of the user hand also in case of severe falls while ensuring at the best the gripping action needed during such a practice.
Said object is achieved by a glove, the characteristic features of which are described in the following claims.